


My Shadow is My Shepherd

by KrisseyCrystal (AisukuriMuStudio)



Series: Sormik Week 2017 [4]
Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Knight Sorey, M/M, Prince Mikleo, Sormik Week 2017, random assassin - Freeform, sob this is so late forgive me, thrown in the mix it's not Rose tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 04:54:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11616303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AisukuriMuStudio/pseuds/KrisseyCrystal
Summary: He had been invited to attend the Pearloats Harvest in the capital city of the kingdom of Rolance. Prince Mikleo just didn't expect to also be the target of an attempted assassination that very same night.Luckily for him, his knight guard is pretty good with a sword.Sormik Week 2017 - Day 4: Pendrago, Loss/Protection





	My Shadow is My Shepherd

The capital city of the theocratic kingdom of Rolance is unlike anything Mikleo or Sorey has ever known. For one, the fact that the kingdom is ruled by its _church_ rather than any formal monarchy—the ruling family, Mikleo has been informed before his visit, are largely figureheads—is new and unfamiliar. The second are the glaring reds and silvers that are everywhere; Rolance’s colors and regalia hang from the tallest buildings and wrap every guard.

Mikleo supposes he shouldn’t consider that entirely different from his own smaller kingdom of Elysia, where their cool shades of teal and white don every soldier and palace upholstery, too. But to see it everywhere he turns—even on the marketplace stalls during this lively festival week—is disorienting.

Or maybe it’s just the lack of grass within Pendrago itself that Mikleo is noticing. Too much red and steel; not enough green.

(For some reason, Mikleo’s always finding himself thinking the world could use more green.)

The third difference is that the primary language of Rolance is so harsh and pitched as opposed to the curl and sigh of Elysia’s.

As a marriageable prince often invited to be present for a foreign kingdom’s (and, by extension, suitor’s) holidays, Mikleo had been well-advised to verse himself as much as possible in the languages of their surrounding kingdoms. Rolancian itself, he remembers, had been difficult to learn, but not impossible. He made it a goal to refresh himself with some basic phrases and vocabulary before he came.

He had roped his ever-faithful knight, Sorey, into his reviewing sessions as well, but Sorey had an uncanny awful luck with trying to learn any language that wasn’t the Ancient Tongue or Elysian.

“Just let me do the talking then, Sorey,” Mikleo had flatly said, unimpressed that the only two Rolancian words his knight had managed to successfully learn were ‘dog’ and ‘knight’—and that was just because they sounded so similar and one was the title of his own post, which he had thought was mighty important to know.

But now they were here, in the middle of Pendrago, celebrating the annual Pearloats Harvest in a kingdom a whole country away from home and everything they’ve ever known, and Mikleo is boggled as to what, exactly, he is expected to do here.

“Just have fun, I think?” Sorey offers, looking around at all of the booths. He grins and taps Mikleo’s arm. He points to a stall a few paces down. “Hey! Look! That one’s got kabobs.”

A small smile works its way onto the fair prince’s face. He shakes his head. “I should have known you were thinking about _food_.”

“Aren’t you?” Sorey asks, and he sniffs as he looks around, eyes alight. “Man, it all looks so good! Can I at _least_ get one of those giant corn on the cobs?”

“Cob or kabob?”

“Both?”

Mikleo rolls his eyes and walks by a fruit cart, shaking his head politely at the man who asked if he was interested in an orange or two. “Aren’t you supposed to be on duty right now?”

“Yeah, and I am! I’m keeping my eyes out!” Sorey enthuses and all of a sudden, he stops with an over-wide gasp. He throws an arm out in front of Mikleo so sharply that for a moment, Mikleo is worried there is a real attempt on his life this very second. Then Sorey says, “Mikleo, stop everything. They have _mabo curry buns_ ,” and he wonders why he was so afraid.

Mikleo sighs. “Do you want a—“

“— _Yes_.”

‘Keeping his eyes out,’ indeed, but for all the wrong things, it seems.

“By the seraphim, you’re such a child,” Mikleo mumbles under his breath. He turns away so Sorey doesn’t see the small and fond smile that slips onto his face. He walks towards the mabo curry bun stall. “Well, c’mon, then.”

Sorey gives a cheer that attracts stares from some of the other festival-goers and scurries after the prince.

A few moments later, mabo curry buns in hand, the pair make their way around to some of the other stalls to see and view the harvest that the people of Rolance are so proud to display. They spend a warm afternoon among strangers, enjoying the conversations they strike up and the stories they hear—as well as the gasps of surprise that crosses the people’s faces when they realize they are speaking to a foreign prince.

The day is spent well in the end, Mikleo thinks. It’s a huge success.

Which is why when he retires for the evening, the attempt on his life is so sudden.

Mikleo thinks he’s supposed to be sleeping when it happens. That’s how it’s usually planned out, at least, right? A victim that doesn’t fight back is far easier to subdue; no one will hear an assassination if the target can’t scream. And yet, when he’s lying in that bed, in a room specially loaned to him by the High Church of Pendrago itself for his visit, Mikleo finds he can’t sleep at all.

It’s probably the mabo curry buns, he thinks. All that sugar is keeping him up. He knew he shouldn’t have let Sorey talk him into buying something so sweet; he should have gone with the corn on the cob. Something far healthier with less regret.

Then he sees a glint of silver in the darkness and at first, he thinks it’s a strange light caught on the mirror.

It takes Mikleo a minute more to realize the mirror on the bureau of his borrowed room is on the _opposite_ wall, not on the wall he is currently facing.

He sits up.

A figure clad entirely in deep, deep brown with a silver mask stands at the foot of his bed. His hands are at his sides. Two beady brown eyes stare back at the prince, unblinking, from two thin slits.

Mikleo has barely a moment to gasp before the stranger jumps.

An arrow is what saves him; it buys him a second more to get his brain in gear and shove himself out of harm’s away. It comes at his attacker from the side, shoving itself deep into the stranger’s right shoulder. There’s a burst of red, and Mikleo thinks that some might have gotten blood on him as well as he scrambles from his bed and stands.

The assassin cries out—guttural—male.

Sorey has never been a good archer, but Mikleo finds himself grateful for this rare moment where his aim has struck true.

His knight enters the room from the side balcony, his post while he had been standing guard. There is no joy on his face as he approaches the assassin, no warmth in his green gaze. The light and excitement from the marketplace earlier the same day has left him and in this moment, unguarded, with his prince _threatened—_ he is the picture of focus, a quiet wrath.

Sorey drops his bow to the carpet. He barely gets his hand upon his sword when the assassin breaks the arrow in his shoulder and tosses the stem aside.

This time, when he comes for Mikleo, Sorey is prepared.

The assassin has a dagger in his hand, lifted high. Sorey takes a step and raises his own sword to deflect it. A sharp _ching_ sounds in the air. The assassin staggers under the strength of Sorey’s parry but stays on his feet. He shifts his weight and comes at Sorey from the opposite direction and side, back hunched, knife swinging out in a wide arc towards his chest.

Sorey retreats a step. He knocks the knife up and away with his sword. The assassin rocks back. For a moment, the man is defenseless. For a moment, Sorey can end this fight quickly.

So he does.

Deftly, Sorey spins his red blade around in his hand, and shoves the hilt into the assassin’s stomach. The stranger gasps and gags, bending to one knee. Sorey knocks the side of the assassin’s head hard with the hilt of his sword again. The masked intruder crumbles to the floor.

Mikleo manages somehow to find his voice by the time Sorey has the stranger pinned, arms pulled behind him, knee pressed to the small of the attacker’s back. He takes a step forward and thinks maybe he can feel his fingers again. Maybe. Finally. He flexes his hands. “Who are you?”

The assassin doesn’t answer. He just breathes—shaky, pained.

Mikleo wonders if he should be as pleased with that as he is. In the moment, his Rolancian comes easy, threaded with still-simmering adrenaline. “Answer the question, and we will consider not killing you. Who are you?”

At that, the assassin chuckles. It’s a quiet, husky sound. “You wouldn’t kill me.”

Sorey’s grip on his arm—the one the arrow had pierced—tightens. The guard’s breath hitches.

Mikleo wonders if Sorey really understood what the attacker said. His eyes flitter back and forth once. “What makes you so sure?” he asks lowly.

“Your reputation precedes you, Prince Mikleo.” The assassin’s voice speaks like an echo; he has heard these words somewhere else before, first. “The fair jewel of Elysia, with countenance cool and sure as water. You’ve never once called for the death of another, though you have a great power at your shadow.”

Once again, Mikleo’s eyes dart to Sorey. They linger. He turns to the assassin again. “Who has told you this? Are they the ones who sent you here?”

Sorey watches the man under him; it occurs to him that the tension that’s suddenly lined his shoulders must mean something significant. “Whatever you asked, I think he’s having second thoughts,” he says to the prince.

“So you _do_ have an employer,” Mikleo murmurs.

The assassin stills—sharply—and the corner of Mikleo’s mouth slides up, triumphant.

He crosses his arms over his chest. “Not only that, but you have an employer who has equipped you with too few details about your target and now, has left you to die.” Huh. “…then you must never have been sent to really _kill_ me. You were just a test, a forerunner. A sacrifice to see just how tough the task would be.”

“No.” The word is hissed. Anger laced behind it. “I am the first and the last. I would never take on a target unless I felt I knew them completely.”

“Clearly _that’s_ not true,” Mikleo answers and he takes a step closer. He squats down to the fallen assassin. “And clearly, your employer doesn’t think the same, either.” He pauses, watching the stranger struggle against Sorey’s hold. “What will happen to you, I wonder, when you return to your employer, having failed?”

The assassin does not say a word.

Mikleo waits.

When it is clear the man refuses to say anything at all, he leans forward. He lowers his voice. His violet eyes, tinged deep blue in the moonlight, speak of a brewing storm. “Well then. Listen closely to what I say, because I won’t say it again. Tell your employer, should give you the chance, that I am protected. Tell them—“ –and for some strange reason, this, above all else, Mikleo wants this would-be assassin to remember— “—tell them my shadow is my Shepherd and with him, I will not go down easy.”

The assassin makes a quiet sound of disgust. “So you’re challenging him.”

“Maybe,” Mikleo watches the masked man a moment more. He lets his own answer hang in the air between them. His eyes drift up to Sorey’s green, keenly observing without fully understanding their conversation. “But something tells me even if he knows, then trying to kill me won’t be any easier of a task. So let him come.”

Something in Mikleo’s face must confess his solid confidence in Sorey, for a moment later, watching, the knight starts to smile back. And _that—_ even in a foreign land, even speaking a foreign language, even almost killed by a foreign assassin— _that_ look is what feels most familiar to Mikleo, and makes him feel invincible.

“Yeah,” he breathes, and the world, for one moment, is surrounded in green and _life_. “Why not? Let them come.”

**Author's Note:**

> Ugh this is so late because I was so busy today cleaning and travelling all freakin' day and now it's 3 in the morning and I'm pooped and I think I hate this but it's done it's done have it take it away from me.


End file.
